DNR to put 134 antlerless deer licenses back on sale for Midland County next Thursday after computer mess-up

By Steve Griffin For the Daily News

Published 6:30 am, Saturday, September 15, 2012

Call it a do-over, a second chance, a mulligan. Whatever you call it, the DNR has it scheduled for 10 a.m. Thursday, Sept. 20, when it will place on sale again about 3,000 antlerless deer licenses that were caught in a computer mess-up on Monday.

Included will be 134 public-land antlerless tags for Midland County.

Dan Fetters, manager of the sporting goods department at Ace Hardware & Sports in downtown Midland, said up to 50 people had lined up to buy antlerless deer hunting licenses when they went on sale Monday at 10 a.m. (Those licenses had gone unclaimed in an earlier drawing.)

Many of those customers were still in line an hour later, and some an hour after that, as the computerized system refused to complete license transactions.

Similar problems were encountered on the DNR’s eLicensing online system, and at about two-thirds of retail license agents, the DNR said Thursday.

“It was three hours of real frustration of our customers and our employees,” Fetters said of the hassles encountered Monday.

“We kept re-logging-in, over and over. Occasionally we’d get so far and no farther, and the next time a little farther.” But most of the time, the purchases became entangled and failed.

“At the worst,” Fetters said, “we were selling about two per half-hour.” The pace gradually quickened, he said, “as they kept getting another bug out of it, a little different thing each time.”

The DNR said in a news release Thursday that the system had earlier passed tests of its ability to handle heavy transaction loads, but routing issues snarled it up Monday.

The problem was widespread. “One of our customers was talking on his cell phone to a buddy at another store,” Fetters said, “and he said it was the same thing.”

“Our customers were all sympathetic. Most of them were our regular customers, and they weren’t blaming us. Ten might have walked away; a couple of them came back later and were angry they couldn’t get their license.”

Hewlett-Packard, which provides the computer service, fixed it within about two hours, the DNR said, and more than 31,000 antlerless licenses were sold that day.

A lingering problem was that about 3,000 licenses, in 20 deer management units (DMUs), were not actually sold but were listed that way and counted against the DMU’s quota when their sale got fouled up. There’s no way to determine, DNR officials say, who would have gotten them had there not been problems. The fairest approach, they figure, is to stage another 10 a.m. sale, first-come, first-served, until previously established management quotas are met.

For Midland County, 134 public-land antlerless tags will go back on sale. Bay County has 37, Isabella County 14.

Meanwhile, over-the-counter sales of antlerless licenses for 58 other DMUs - those not erroneously listed as sold-out Monday - continue at retailers and the DNR’s website.

For a list of DMUs with leftover licenses - both buyable now and on sale Thursday - see the ‘Hunting Licenses Currently Available’ links at www.michigan.gov/huntdrawings.